Custer What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding product — strand-based, similar in concept to OSB, treated with a resin binder and coated with a wax-based moisture repellent, then finished with primer or factory paint. It's been on the market for decades, it's lighter and easier to cut than fiber cement, and a lot of contractors like working with it because it goes up fast. We're not going to pretend it's a bad product. In the right climate, installed correctly and maintained on schedule, it holds up reasonably well.
We just don't install it. Here's the honest reasoning, not a sales pitch against a competitor's product.
The Core Issue: It's Still Wood
Underneath the coating, LP SmartSide is a wood composite. Wood composites are engineered to resist moisture better than raw lumber, but they can't be made immune to it — wood strands and resin binders will swell, delaminate, or break down if water gets past the surface and stays there. The manufacturer's own warranty terms reflect this: LP SmartSide requires specific caulking, painting, and flashing details to be followed exactly, and it requires the homeowner to keep up with repainting and recaulking on a set schedule to keep the warranty valid. Miss that maintenance window and coverage can be reduced or voided.
For a siding contractor, that's a real liability. We're the ones standing behind the install, and a product whose long-term performance depends heavily on a homeowner's ongoing maintenance calendar is a harder thing to guarantee than one that isn't.
Why That Matters More in Custer
Custer sits in Whatcom County, close enough to the Salish Sea that salt-laden air is a normal part of the weather here, not an occasional event. Combine that with the long stretches of driving rain we get off the water, plus a moss and algae season that can run most of the year on north-facing walls, and you've got a climate that tests every seam, cut edge, and caulk joint on a house. Any siding product that depends on an intact factory coating and disciplined re-caulking to keep moisture out is going to get more of a workout here than it would inland.
The failure point we see most often with engineered wood siding in this region isn't the field of the panel — it's the edges. Cut ends, butt joints, and areas around windows and trim are where the wax-based moisture protection is most likely to be compromised during installation, and where our climate's constant damp gives water the most opportunity to find its way in. Once moisture gets into a wood-based substrate and stays there through a Whatcom County winter, swelling and softening can follow, and that's a repair problem, not a touch-up problem.
It's Not About the Product Being "Bad"
We want to be fair here: plenty of LP SmartSide installations perform fine for years, especially in drier climates or on homes where owners stay on top of the maintenance schedule. The product has real advantages — it's lighter, it takes fasteners easily, and it's generally less expensive up front than fiber cement. If a homeowner wants it, other contractors in the area install it well.
Our reasoning is narrower than "this product fails." It's that we've made a business decision to install one siding system, install it to spec every time, and stand behind it without asking homeowners to manage a maintenance calendar to keep their warranty intact. A wood-composite product doesn't fit that standard the way fiber cement does, particularly in a coastal, high-moisture county like ours.
What We Install Instead
We install James Hardie fiber cement exclusively. It's cement, sand, and cellulose fiber — there's no wood core to swell, rot, or feed moss the way organic material can. Hardie's ColorPlus factory finish is baked on and warranted separately from the substrate, so the color and the board aren't relying on a homeowner's repainting schedule to hold up against salt air and rain. Hardie also engineers specific product lines (their HZ5 designation) for wetter climate zones like ours, which is a distinction that matters more here than it would somewhere dry.
Fiber cement isn't maintenance-free — nothing that sits on the outside of a house in Whatcom County is — but the maintenance burden is lower and less time-sensitive, and the material itself doesn't have an organic core for our moss season to work on. That's a meaningful difference over a 20- or 30-year ownership horizon, which is the timeframe most homeowners are actually thinking in when they replace siding.
The Short Version
| Consideration | LP SmartSide | James Hardie Fiber Cement |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Engineered wood strand | Cement, sand, cellulose fiber |
| Moisture behavior | Resistant, but vulnerable at cut edges over time | No organic core to swell or rot |
| Finish warranty | Tied to owner maintenance schedule | Factory ColorPlus finish, separately warranted |
| Climate-specific engineering | General purpose | HZ5 line built for wet regions |
If you're weighing siding options for a home in Custer or anywhere else in Whatcom County, we're happy to walk through what we see locally and why we settled on the system we install. Reach out for a free, no-pressure estimate — we'll look at your home's exposure and give you a straight answer.